Manager - Lead Design (User) Researcher

Recruiting: VA - McLean, United States of America, McLean, Virginia

Manager - Lead Design (User) Researcher

We are currently seeking a Lead Design (User) Researcher to join our team to focus on strategic level research. Because we are a human centered organization obsessed with delivering products and services based on customer research and feedback, design research is at the heart of our work. We believe using empathy, curiosity and asking questions to understand our customers is core to delivering best in class products and services. We represent the voice of our customers and focus on delivering customer insights.

The Design team at Capital One is at the forefront of enriching our customers’ digital and physical experiences. We champion a thriving environment of collaboration, authenticity and healthy critique, in which we honor diversity of thought, create a culture of belonging, and elevate one another. If you’re an innovator and storyteller who embraces an environment where you can experiment, learn, and change banking for good, we would love to hear from you.  

What You’ll Do: 

As a leader and maker, you’ll be asked to handle responsibilities, including:

Strategy & Planning

• Collaborating with design, technology, product, and business teams to create intuitive and engaging customer experiences across multiple projects simultaneously, start to finish

• Translating findings into insights that guide the experience and product decisions

• Leading and shaping early product definitions with formative and foundational research.

• Engage in portfolio prioritization to help set the research strategy and road map for the team

• Manage through open ended problems and support early product definition 

• Advocate for the customer through human-centered research methods

• Defining standards and best practices for how research is done 

• Champion the prioritization of research & analysis as a basis for making design centered product enhancements

• Working with partners and teams across various geographies

• Embracing and advocating for an experience mindset - this is as important to the work as the results

Lead & Develop Teams

• Building and leading successful teams through career development by mentoring, coaching, and elevating others

• Guide team members in research planning, alignment, execution, analysis, and follow-up 

• Navigating conflict resolution within your team as well as within projects, teams and partner relationships

• Participate in hiring by reviewing resumes, conducting interviews and attending consensus

Execution & Delivery

• Demonstrate fluency of research tools and techniques to measure success, present opportunities, and support decision-making and prioritization utilizing qualitative and quantitative research methods

• Practice and help evolve the team’s research techniques and toolset to work effectively in cross-team collaboration

• Participate in end-to-end product research by:

  • Conducting research studies at all stages from discovery to validation, using a variety of methods to understand customer needs and define opportunities which can include in depth/empathy interviews, field studies, prototype testing & usability benchmarking, contextual inquiry, surveys, card sorts, heuristic review and participatory design

  • Leading designers and non-designers on project teams to understand and apply research findings by framing problems, defining insights, and designing new methodologies/practices to serve research needs

  • Facilitate synthesis and knowledge mapping sessions, teaching research methodologies

  • Distilling findings into clearly articulated and actionable insights for stakeholders by clearly articulating strategies

  • Knowledge management and dissemination of insights, and creating standards for how research is done, shared, templatized and managed

  • Planning and facilitating workshops with internal and external stakeholders to align with business needs

  • Present and communicate research and analysis clearly and effectively across various organizations in any format required. Must be able to sell, support, explain, and simply present usability approach and research to various audience types

Basic Qualifications

• Master’s Degree in social sciences, human factor, cognitive science, human computer interaction or behavioral economics

• At least 7 years of experience with user, product, or market research

Preferred Qualifications

• Ph.D